Tentacle-Free Anime: "Kara no Kyoukai" Movie 1 (2007) Review

This is the first review in what will be an ongoing review line of films by studio ufotable, focusing on their acclaimed series Kara no Kyoukai: The Garden of Sinners. Each one won’t come out right after the other, but I will be covering every one of them this year. I understand these movies are each parts of a whole, and also counted as “episodes” rather than just simply movies, but seeing as how they are movies in their own right I figured it’d be best to tackle each of them individually and see how they all stand on their own.

Summary:Mikiya Kokuto finds himself intrigued by two things. The first is by Shiki Ryougi a beautiful, yet rather unsociable, girl and the other is the strange series of violent deaths that start occurring in his town. As he attempts to get closer to Shiki, he soon learns that the two are connected and that there are many supernatural forces at work which could very likely get him killed as well.[AnimeNewsNetwork.com]

I haven’t really heard much about this series. Other than “you should go watch it,” “The animation is beautiful” and “the soundtrack is stunning.” Not all of which were exactly in those words, but for a long time this has definitely been something that has flown completely under my radar until as of late. At first glance the premise sounds promising, with a touch of mystery and the paranormal;two factors that are generally an instant sale for me. So recently a friend of mine and I decided we were going to traverse all 8 of these movies. He lives in another city so we have to watch them on the occasions we get to see one another.

The movies are based off of a light novel series of the same name, which seems to be all the rage in Japan currently as far as anime adaptations go.

DVD cover

When we started up the movie we were met with an exchange between the two main characters of the series, Kokuto and Shiki. It is an interesting exchange that serves to help us sort of gauge their relationship and there’s also a fair amount of product placement. The first thing I noticed was, indeed, the animation is beautiful. With deep, dark colors being the overbearing scheme, sort of a tonal set that’ll take us through the entire film. I assume these two are old friends with a past that we will see eventually. We’re then met with a beautiful music score that pretty much cements my enjoyment of this movie no matter how good or bad it ends up being. “Ongakushu” by Yuki Kajiura is haunting score that takes you into a world filled with darkness and uncertainty, but with the possibility of a light at the end of the tunnel. I love it. And from there, the story begins to unravel.

Don’t worry; I’m not going to do an overview of the movie, so let’s just get right into it now.

Badass Shiki.

This film unfortunately doesn’t work as an introduction to this world through solid story telling means. It’s almost as if it is choosing to tell this story with the expectation that viewers will already have knowledge of the source material upon viewing. It takes place in September of 1998, Kokuto, who is touted as the main character is barely in the film only really appearing in the beginning scene I described earlier and the final scenes of the film. Shiki is the real star of the show, and it’s through her we get the meat of the tale. I don’t know much about her yet, as we get little knowledge of her character in this movie (that’s something, according to the next episode trailer, that we’re getting in episode 2) but from what I could tell she’s very stoic. She’s lonely, and she has some paranormal abilities of her own. One of which is apparently the ability to destroy spirits with her dagger.

Shiki is also very badass, not afraid to dive head first into a fight without bothering to confront the problem beforehand. As far as I can tell her mantra is fight first, questions later. And that’s pretty cool. She’s juxtaposed by her third partner in paranormal crime solving, Toko, who is all about the questions first. The two ladies bounce off one another nicely and you can tell they both have deep respect for one another. It’s nice to see in a story for a change.

Several high school girls find themselves committing suicide throughout the movie by falling off the same building. This creates the mystery for our heroes to solve as the police cannot drum up any reason why these girls would do such a thing so unexpectedly. And while I find the reveal to be quite fascinating, and probably the best part of this whole adventure, the two big problems come to mind: if up to 7 girls kept jumping off the same exact building within’ shorts amount of time of one another you’d expect there to be a strong amount of policemen guarding the building at all times and shutting off any access to the area. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen at all and Shiki is able to waltz right into the area without any sort of fight from officers.

Shiki comes across the body of one of the girls.

The second problem is the theme of committing suicide itself. While it’s an intriguing mover for the story, there is a moment at the end when one of the characters says that it is never okay to commit suicide before looking directly at the viewer, as if she is preaching to them. While it’s a nice sentiment, and I somewhat agree it’s better to try to work out your issues instead of turning tail and running away, I felt the ending speech about never committing suicide to be heavy-handed and too on the nose for my liking.

Ominous figures of the Fujo building.

What this movie does have in spades is its action. Where character development and character knowledge lack, and where all we get in our introduction to this world is vague hints at what is to come and how elements in this world work, we are delightfully treated to incredibly kinetic and at times heart-pounding action. Almost making this more of an action flick than a character drama, really. Watching Shiki fly through the air as she takes on the ghosts of the dead in the silence of night is a stunning visual, and her fight with a rather hostile spirit in the hallways of a rundown building is quite feast for the eyes. If there’s enough reason to watch this movie regardless, it’s the action.

Finally, I want to discuss the music a bit more. I’ve fallen madly in love with music from Kara no Kyoukai, it’s maddening and gorgeous. The kind of orchestral and enchanting sounds that are any classical music lover could enjoy, and anyone wanting to just sit and relax as they fade off into the confines of their imagination can enjoy even more. “Thanatos” from the original soundtrack (OST for short) being my personal favorite number, seriously go look it up. There are several ways a person can get “outsiders” to at least appreciate the medium of anime even if they can’t get into it and one of those ways I have always felt is with a strong music score that comes from a good series. If anyone feels anime doesn’t have any sophistication or integrity I implore you to show them the soundtrack to Kara no Kyoukai, I wouldn’t be surprised if they start singing a bit of a different tune afterwards.

This movie, story wise, isn’t anything special. And honestly it doesn’t do a wonderful job narratively of introducing us to this world as too many things are left up in the air by the end, and I just don’t feel they are elements that couldn’t have been explained in this first movie. That all being said, based off the music, the animation, the fight scenes, and just how badass Shiki is, I did find myself really enjoying this movie. I am also certain many others would find a lot in this to intrigue them and get them interested in continuing on with the story. Next episode is touted as giving us the history between Shiki and Kokuto, and I personally am excited for that.

Final Score: 3 Jumping Girls out of 5

Have you seen "Kara No Kyoukai"? How did you enjoy the movie and the review?